software<\/p>\n
ValueLicensing celebrates while Redmond considers next steps<\/p>\n
The UK’s Court of Appeal has dismissed Microsoft’s appeal against a ruling that ValueLicensing (VL) can resell pre-owned software licences.<\/p>\n
The judgment<\/a>, handed down July 7, follows a\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0by the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT)\u00a0in November that customers could resell their licenses, even if Office contained clipart.<\/p>\n In 2021, VL\u00a0filed a claim<\/a> accusing Microsoft of stifling the market for pre-owned on-prem software licenses, alleging the US biz baked restrictive clauses into its contracts \u2013 essentially, better subscription deals for customers who didn’t resell old licenses. VL sought \u00a3270 million in damages; Microsoft denied wrongdoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The case later\u00a0took a turn<\/a>, when Microsoft attempted to reframe it as a copyright dispute. VL was leaning on the EU’s UsedSoft ruling, which established that secondhand software licenses could legally be resold. Microsoft changed tack and countered that Office’s icons and help files made it a creative work, and thus covered by the\u00a0Copyright and Information Society Directive<\/a>\u00a0rather than the software licensing rules UsedSoft addressed. Microsoft also argued that licenses it had sold in bulk (for example, a 1,000-seat purchase) couldn’t legally be broken up and resold piecemeal by VL.<\/p>\n The CAT rejected both arguments and ruled unanimously<\/a>\u00a0for ValueLicensing. Microsoft filed an appeal, and that appeal has now failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The judgment is unambiguous on both counts. On copyright, the Court of Appeal\u00a0agreed with the CAT that Microsoft’s reasoning would lead to “odd results.”<\/p>\n “It would mean that all that was necessary to avoid the effect of UsedSoft would be to incorporate some icons or clip art with the program,”\u00a0the judgment noted.<\/p>\n As for the subdivision of volume licenses, again, the Court of Appeal sided with the CAT and dismissed Microsoft’s appeal: there’s nothing wrong with VL’s approach.<\/p>\n VL’s Jonathan Horley told The Register in a statement: “I am delighted that the Court of Appeal has given such a clear judgment in ValueLicensing’s favour on both of Microsoft’s appeals. The judgment agreed with all the main conclusions of the CAT on both rulings under appeal as well as clarifying the overall legality of our business model.”<\/p>\n Horley pointed out that none of Microsoft’s arguments succeeded and VL now intends to pursue its compensation claim. <\/p>\n “We are considering the consequences of the Court of Appeal’s judgment for Microsoft’s defence to our claim and will focus in the coming weeks and months on the key procedural steps leading up to a liability trial,” he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n A Microsoft spokesperson told The Register: “We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision and will seek permission to appeal. Today’s decision does not address ValueLicensing’s core complaint that we gave customers the option to apply the value of their licenses for older products to new cloud subscriptions rather than selling them to third parties. <\/p>\n “We continue to believe that was both legal and the right thing to do. Helping our customers move to the cloud improves productivity and security.”<\/p>\n Justin Turner KC, the judge presiding over ValueLicensing’s claim, is also overseeing\u00a0Alexander Wolfson’s collective action<\/a>\u00a0against Microsoft. Wolfson was granted permission to intervene<\/a>\u00a0in the appeal on March 30, and the judgment noted that “the intervener’s position was essentially supportive of VL’s case.”<\/p>\n That potentially makes today’s dismissal significant well beyond VL’s own claim. The Wolfson collective action, bolstered by this ruling, could expose Microsoft to liability running into the billions, dwarfing the hundreds of millions at stake in VL’s original claim. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"software ValueLicensing celebrates while Redmond considers next steps The UK’s Court of Appeal has dismissed Microsoft’s appeal against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-679161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}